Is my transmission gonna break?

[DaTduDe]

My car makes a little bit of a grinding noise when I start out in first gear, but it doesn't ever make the noise is any other gear. Also, if I let off the gas to get it to upshift, it sometimes seems to slip a little. My only guess is the tranny, but it's really not a very educated guess. It's an automatic if that helps...the car (2000 3.8L) has 71,000 on it, and I'm the second owner but I don't believe the fluid and filter have ever been changed. I've heard that a change after 75,000 isn't a great ideo so I'm a little skeptical, what do you guys think?

[CDNFB]

Re: Is my transmission gonna break?

Before you go any further into trying to figure out these problems change that trans fluid and filter, then evaluate how your tranmission performs. Your suspicions might be confirmed if you drop the tranny pan and find a bunch if crud and metal fillings in it.

There has been a lot of discussion in the past on this forum as to whether or not tranny fluid changes and flushes lead to leakage from the seals, especially if you change to synthetic. I have never seen this phenomenum in my experiences. I flushed my A4 trans fluid with synthetic just recently, (its first change at 100 K miles) but I also changed the input shaft and tail shaft seals. (tail shaft seal is an easy change, the input shaft seal is not)